Irritating Ideas in Video Games

[twistedmic]

For the most part, I hate QTE's. God of War did them well, specifically since most of them are completely voluntary (apart from the boss battles). Prototype did them poorly.
Though, one the biggest annoyance/grievance/etc. I have in games is piss-poor dumb-ass AI. It's no fun if your enemies are to stupid to to take cover or charges at you across a wide open room without firing their weapons. And it's extremely annoying to have AI teammates that will run right into your line of fire and getting themselves (sometimes making you loose the current mission) or in the event of a botched grenade throw (from me) have your teammates stand around like fenceposts and get themselves blown up.

The other major problem I have is buggy or inconsistent hit damage and aiming. It's maddening to have to deal with enemies that can repeatedly hit me dead on half an in game mile away while behind cover and using a shot-loaded (rather than slug-loaded) shotgun when I can barely put two rounds into them from less than a tenth of the distance out in the open, crouched down and using the fine aiming and sights. Soldier of Fortune: Payback was the worst offender in that regard.

 

[Another]

Every time an FPS tries to shoehorn in a level that's supposedly frightening. Seriously? I'm carrying an assault rifle, a grenade launcher, and am wearing power armor the size and weight of a pregnant hippo.

Or for a specific game. I was really disappointed in FF XIII when...

Spoiler

Hope didn't stab Snow. Hope brutally murdering snow would have been the best twist ever. Even better if Sazh had shot Vanille. THAT VOICE!!!

 

[JuryNelson]

UNCHARTED!!!!

There's a part that I talk about all the time: You come upon the ruins, you look around, Drake pulls out his map and says "Okay, where am I going?" and a billion guys with guns start shooting at you. IN A CUTSCENE.

A game that is ostensibly about finding where to go next and your reward is a hundred men with unlimited ammo who want to kill you. Game of the Year.

 

[notsosavagemessiah]

They give you a crapload of heavy duty enemies to fight, and then give you no autosave. Rofl, really?

I died and now I have to trek through all that crap again. Seriously?

I don't mean to sound like a grumpy old man when I say this, but that is the most pathetic, whiny, childish complaint I have ever heard about any game, ever. Autosave. Rofl, really?
This may be difficult to wrap your brain around, but in my day there was no autosave, and in most cases no saving at all. When we restarted our consoles we started the whole game over from the beginning, and we liked it that way.
Back when games were hard, you failed over and over and over until you got good. If you were on the last boss and lost all your lives, you started from the beginning, with nothing. And still, we liked it that way.

Let that idea sink in for a minute. Autosave? Seriously?

OT: Regenerating health..

sir, i agree with everything you've said, however, you've said it in such away you sound like a grumpy old man.

but i digress, back to OT: I hate androgynous lead characters, games without a plot (looking at you gears of war), any game with broken quests.

 

[Blueruler182]

Almost any vehicle section ever has pissed me off. The only exception I can think of right now is Halo. The controls are irritating as all hell. Bad Company 2 is really bad for this. I get in a fucking tank and can't figure out how to shoot the god damn gun before I blow up. Great.

 

[Marter]

Almost any time the Six-Axxis is used on a PS3 game. It's almost always a bad thing.

 

[JuryNelson]

Press X To Not Die

/thread

I never really understood why people hate quick time events. I really have fun with them.

They disrupt expectations, which is why they happen so often. It's the kind of thing that sounds really good in a pitch meeting. "Gamers have become accustomed to the gameplay-cutscene dichotomy in modern gaming, but with Sword of the Berserk for Dreamcast, we're going to shake that up. We never take you out of the action!"

It's the kind of thing that some people feel like it makes them part of the cutscene and makes other people feel like they're not allowed to watch the cutscene because they have to play Simon®.

I hate them because I want to watch the cutscene, but I totally get it. Simon® is really fun.

 

[Katana314]

Gimped movement for "realism". Let me tell you something: In real life, I have full, precise control over my own feet. I can dance around in a circle, and can look in any direction while walking in another. Games that make you face straight forward while sprinting, or just make strafing very slow, are unendingly annoying to me.

The one bit of realism they often MISS is maintaining people's momentum. I'm sure we've all had that moment trying to snipe an NPC when they unexpectedly switch direction and throw off our shot. In real life, you can tell when someone's about to rotate their body 90 degrees.

 

[psivamp]

Not exactly search-bar approved. Sorry, I'm just a grumpy bastard because I have a nearly identical thread that died a couple days back.

Edit: OT: Mandatory mini-games. Such as racing in any open world game: GTA series, AC, inFamous, Prototype... The non-genre segments in any game: stealth in an action shooter, platforming in anything except a platformer...

 

[SextusMaximus]

Difficulty in a game? No autosave every two seconds? WHY I NEVER!

It's about an hour of gameplay.

Hardly, it's a few minutes. More-to-the-point, you can still save!

 

[zsd]

Escort missions. Period.

 

[DarkHourPrince]

I love jRPGS so I was so disappointed at the quality of the translations for Lux Pain. Story-wise it had a very unique, creative concept but the translations into English slaughtered the quality and left me re-reading some bits three or four times before I oculd grasp what the hell someone was trying to say. Not to mention, sometimes the voice-overs and text did not match at ALL. If you're going to put in vocies AND text, make them match.

Another thing that drives me nuts is grid-based battle systems like Fire Emblem, Disgaea, and Tactics Advanced. That's got to be the most ANNOYING type of battle system invented.

This next irritation I've only seen in Fire Emblem, which kept me from ever touching it after watchign a kid I used to know play it: when your people die, they die for good. And these could be people crucial to the story. That means you could put an insane amount of effort into a boss, almost kill it, and then it kills one of your major players. That means havign to reset and fight that boss ALL OVER AGAIN. Noooo thank you.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

Toss up between QTEs, regenerating health, retarded AI, and vehicle sections. Actually, let's simply this: current gaming!
Ok, I've been playing Halo3 in the past few days (summer break, I'm bored, and that game happened to be in my brother's Xbox), and the regenerating health, the AI, and the awful vehicle controls make me wonder how this game ever sold so well. I dread to imagine just how shitty MW2 is. I'll take the original Half-Life over this pile of crap any day, thank you very much.
/grumpy old man

 

[Worgen]

Almost any vehicle section ever has pissed me off. The only exception I can think of right now is Halo. The controls are irritating as all hell. Bad Company 2 is really bad for this. I get in a fucking tank and can't figure out how to shoot the god damn gun before I blow up. Great.

you shoot the gun by clicking the mouse button

I suppose the biggest irritant in a game for me is length, short games really annoy me, sure the usual excuse is "its really a multi player game" (Im looking at you cod) but it still pisses me off when someone wants me to pay 50-60 bucks for 5 hours of game play, especially if its on 360 since I dont have a gold account

 

[Blueruler182]

Almost any vehicle section ever has pissed me off. The only exception I can think of right now is Halo. The controls are irritating as all hell. Bad Company 2 is really bad for this. I get in a fucking tank and can't figure out how to shoot the god damn gun before I blow up. Great.

you shoot the gun by clicking the mouse button

I suppose the biggest irritant in a game for me is length, short games really annoy me, sure the usual excuse is "its really a multi player game" (Im looking at you cod) but it still pisses me off when someone wants me to pay 50-60 bucks for 5 hours of game play, especially if its on 360 since I dont have a gold account

I play on the 360, and I don't have the game anymore. I figured it out before I got rid of the damn thing, but Bad Company 2 is an incredibly broken game. I only played it for a week, and once the primal part of my brain stopped caring about the destructo physics, I started noticing all the bugs.

PS, Worgen, the profile picture is fantastic.

 

[UPRC]

What I can stand are vehicle sequences in games that shouldn't have them. RPGs especially should never make me go racing or ride mechs.

 

[Uncompetative]

Never ever interrupt a climactic escape sequence with learn-as-you-go tutorial information.

Jason Bourne has lost his memory of who he is, not how to handle himself in a fight.

Spoiler: What is needed is a training level that you have to qualify in before you are allowed to play the story itself...

As in COD4. You could vary the challenges you have to face so that learning the (QTE...yuk) controls doesn't become a chore.